Last night we had a great meeting at AgileRTP, our local Agile user's group. Jason Tanner of Enthiosys spoke on Agile Transitions. It was more of a facilitated group discussion and went very well.
Some of the topics discussed include:
Barriers to Agile adoption.
- Perceived lack of planning
- Perceived lack of control
- Fear of transparency (from people who like to hide)
How do enable people to try something new? Create an environment of safety.
Most people assumed that "emergent design" was inherent to Agile, but as we discussed it, most people were referring to "just enough" architecture, not "make it up as you go." Just in Time Architecture? (JITA)
Developers who fear a loss of control are really fearing the exposure that Agile brings. There's no where to hide in a two week iteration.
Questions of scalability and emergent design were discussed.
Planning Poker was mentioned too.
As always, it was a great meeting with a lot of audience driven topics. The only handout was a mind map!
I'm just starting to organize speakers and topics, but wanted to give everyone as much advance notice as possible. RubyRX and AgileRX are going to be a joint conference in both Philadelphia and DC this year!
We'll be in Philadelphia on July 30-31 and DC on September 3-4.
Block off the dates now! I'll post again when I have more information. There's no web page or registration page yet.
Also, I apologize for my sparse blogging in recent months... I should be coming out of that now and will post an explanation in the next few days.
Many of my students in recent classes have told us they can only get approval for a single event this year. They want to attend (for instance) our Test Automation Training, and a No Fluff Just Stuff event, but can only get one event approved.
We've heard you, and have an answer. We're now including an NFJS pass with our next few public training events. The price is higher to cover the two events, but you'll only have to get management approval one time.
Will this work? Will it let more people get the training they need to be the very best they can be? We hope so. This is not the time to stop "maintaining the car" and waiting for the engine to fall out. If anything, you need to be sure your "car" (or team) is top shape during this tough time, and as efficient as possible.
Let us help you stay at the top of your game. Our Hibernate training has been popular lately, as well as the test automation. (I'm told I don't do a good enough job telling people it's about complete product testing, not just unit or integration testing.)
Here are a few upcoming events. I hope to see you there.
Test Automation in Austin, April 29th.
Test Automation in Cincinnati, May 13th.
Test Automation in Boston, June 24th.
Test Automation in Minneapolis, August 19th.
Test Automation in Chicago, Sept. 16th.
btw, we've also got a software team optimization class coming up!
Software Team Optimization in Reston, June 17th.
A few weeks ago in Atlanta a class attendee told me about an idea she'd been considering. A "Blue Angels" style dev group at large companies. The more she talked about it, the more the idea sounded exciting.
You set up an elite team of developers, but, like the famous Blue Angels, you force people out of it after a time. This prevents developers from stratifying, and also gives everyone at the company a shot at making the team next year.
It's an exciting way for a large company to both foster excellence and spread that expertise back to the rest of the company. This is an idea worth pursuing.
Read more about it on Blue Angels for Corporate America? by Laura Moore. I expect to see more good ideas here in the future.
This article is also on DZone
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